Finally…no more “They’re coming back”, no more “Nurse….Nurse”, and no more of the “Green action, Green action, Green action” jingle.
Political advertising is over for the 2007 election campaign, and what a relief that is.
Please note, I don’t have direct control over the Google Ads. I am manually blocking political ads as soon as I see them, but such changes take Google a few hours to process.
Samuel
1 comment November 22nd, 2007 at 12:01am
Good evening Stuart,
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict the coalition to win the election by two seats in a minority government. I'm also going to tip that a coalition front bench MP will lose their seat, but it will not be John Howard.
Whilst I think the swing to Labor will be impressive, I don't think it will be enough, especially in some of the key marginal seats, to get them enough seats to take power.
I can only hope that this limb I am going out on does not collapse.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
5 comments November 21st, 2007 at 09:00pm
Good afternoon John,
Macleod's Daughters is being cancelled…finally some good news! I know I don't have to watch it, but I can't escape the promos…they are bad enough.
Even better, less than eleven hours of political advertising to go. This is turning out to be a very good day.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
6 comments November 21st, 2007 at 01:30pm
There are three things you can be sure of in life, death, taxes, and politicians using smear tactics. We saw it yesterday with the coalition accusing thirteen Labor candidates of being ineligible to stand for office. That backfired for them, but despite assurances, the smear tactics are here to stay.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/013.mp3]
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The script follows.
Samuel
Welcome to Editorial Echoes for November 21, 2007, I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart.
Well that’s typical of me isn’t it. I should know better than to say things like “there will be an episode of Editorial Echoes every morning”…I suppose I’ll just never learn.
Anyway, on with the show, and thirteen Labor candidates are ineligible to stand for parliament because they hadn’t resigned from government jobs before the nominations to stand for parliament closed. Or at least, that’s what the coalition were claiming yesterday.
The claims have fallen apart in spectacular style. Apart from being wrong, the claims were based on outdated and poorly researched information. The accused Labor candidates struck back very swiftly, calling the accusations “the act of a desperate party”, and “another reason to “vote the for the coalition last”.
The tactic was grubby, and at least one of the accused Labor candidates has announced that the Labor party will never stoop that low. As much as I might like to believe that, I just can’t…politics is a very grubby business, and if the tables were turned, Labor were miles behind in the polls and they managed to get their hands on some seemingly highly damaging information about the coalition, I believe they would use it without hesitation. I believe that almost any politician in that position would.
Don’t get me wrong, the accusations were very serious, and I would expect the coalition MP behind the accusations, Andrew Robb, to apologise. All I am trying to say is that desperation politics is a game both major parties are very good at, and whilst an apology is in order, you can be guaranteed we will see similar tactics over and over again in the years ahead.
Any why will we see it again…it’s a matter of trust…if the accusations had been proven, or hard to disprove, the staunch supporters of either side wouldn’t have been affected, but swinging voters would have been. The accusation was the type of accusation which could have left a sense of “what else are they hiding” in voters’ minds, and removed a buch of candidates from some crucial seats.
As it happens it has only left the coalition looking very silly and embarrassed, but despite that, we will see the smear tactics from both sides again. The risk may be high with smear tactics, but the rewards can be even greater if the information is accurate.
This has been Editorial Echoes for November 21, 2007, if you have any thoughts or comments about any of this, email them to echoes@samuelgordonstewart.com
I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart, I hope yesterday was a good day for you, tomorrow it’ll either be just me again, or I’ll be joined by a journalist who is on the campaign trail. So until then, tada.
November 21st, 2007 at 08:51am
Good evening Stuart,
I just stepped outside for a few minutes and was shocked by the level of humidity in the air. It's a nice warm evening in Canberra (24 degrees at the moment) but the humidity is climbing very quickly and is currently on 62%. Canberra isn't usually a place that I find has a high level of humidity when the temperature is above twenty degrees, so going outside and finding the conditions to be quite uncomfortable was a bit of a shock.
I only hope this isn't a sign of the weather I can expect over summer as that would be very difficult to deal with.
I remember the rule you had on the overnight show "If it matters to you, it matters to us". I hope that rule is still in place because otherwise this email is destined for the chopping block!
Have a great night!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
5 comments November 19th, 2007 at 10:00pm
Good afternoon John,
I hadn't noticed it before, but listening to your mystery voice today, I have to say that he sounds an awful lot like a certain ABC TV personality who interviewed John Laws last week. I had never noticed the similarity between the voices of the two people before, but they are fairly similar.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
4 comments November 19th, 2007 at 01:00pm
The RiotACT have been running a series of email interviews with the ACT’s set of parliamentary candidates for the federal election. They have sent the same ten questions to each candidate, and published their replies “in full and unedited”.
Question two is interesting:
What would you like to see as the first piece of legislative change brought about by your Government? What are your personal goals for your first year representing the ACT?
The incumbent Labor candidate for Fraser, Bob McMullan answered thusly:
The first piece of legislative change I would like to see is the repeal of Workchoices and the restoration of fairness in Australian Workplaces.
At a local level I would like to see a decentralisation of Commonwealth Government departments to Gungahlin, to ease the demand for parking facilities in Civic and reduce the level of traffic to the city centre.
I will also be working for an upgrade of the roads servicing Canberra International Airport.
A mere three days later, ACT Greens senate candidate Kerrie Tucker provided the following answer:
The first piece of legislative change I would like to see is the repeal of Workchoices and the restoration of fairness in Australian Workplaces.
At a local level I would like to see a decentralisation of Commonwealth Government departments to Gungahlin, to ease the demand for parking facilities in Civic and reduce the level of traffic to the city centre.
I will also be working for an upgrade of the roads servicing Canberra International Airport.
If Ms. Tucker had the same policy as Mr. McMullan, but actually took the time to write it herself, I’d be pleased. I wouldn’t agree with her as I am a fan of WorkChoices, but at least I’d know that she is willing to put in the effort as a representative.
This copy and paste effort is the last nail in her coffin for me. There is no way known that she can win my vote now.
And on a semi-related note, one of Ms. Tucker’s radio ads, authorised by Roland Manderson, is spoken by somebody who sounds like they’re pretending they’re elderly, and deliberately talking in a monotone and monopace voice. The best bit is the end, where it is announced that it is “spoken by Noel Simple”.
Even if I ignore the implausibility of the speaker being named Noel Simple, this is the only speaker named, which means that either the Greens aren’t naming the person reading the “spoken and authorised” announcement, or they’re both the same person, and the ad is a sham. I think it might be time to send an email to Ms. Tucker’s office to find out.
Update: A reply from Ms. Tucker’s office, in particular Thomas Burmester, Office Manager.
Mr Gordon-Stewart,
I’d like to at first address your issue with the radio announcement. Noel Semple is indeed an elderly man, in his eighties, and is no actor – his voice could not me more genuine. I know Mr Semple well as I keep all used stamps received in the office for him, which he collects for charity. I intend to address your other issues as soon as I can consult with Kerrie.
Regards,
Thomas Burmester
Office Manager
In that case I would like to apologise to Mr. Semple for any offence my comments may have caused. I suppose some people do sound a bit wooden (for lack of a better description) when reading for radio, and I appreciate Mr. Burmester’s prompt and candid response.
End Update
Further Update: Ms. Tucker’s office won’t confirm it, but the RiotACT administrators have. The copied answer was a mistake at RiotACT’s end. I apologise to Ms. Tucker for any offence caused.
Sadly one of her campaign managers, a certain Ms. Margo Kingston, has managed to convince me that there is no point in voting for the Greens with her ranting in the comments of the previously linked RiotACT article. End Update
Samuel
8 comments November 19th, 2007 at 11:05am
Good morning Mike,
One of your emailers suggested that Canberra should have a "big" artwork for Canberra, much like we have the Big Banana, Big Merino etc
How about The Big Roundabout. It not only represents the roads of Canberra, but also the inherent bureaucracy of Canberra.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
November 19th, 2007 at 08:00am
Anti-conseravtive group GetUp have been running an advertising campaign with the aim of giving control of the senate to the Green, Democrat and Labor parties under the guise of "balance", but balance, as Samuel explains, is not ideal in parliament, as it only panders to minority groups.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/012.mp3]
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The script follows.
Samuel
Welcome to Editorial Echoes for November 19, 2007, I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart.
A group called GetUp have been running an advertising campaign to, according to them, return balance to the senate. The advertising campaign, called “Save Our Senate” features Lyn Allison from the Democrats, Bob Brown from the Greens and Kate Lundy from Labor, urging people to vote for either of the three parties in the senate, in an effort to restore balance.
The advertising campaign has been running quite heavily on television and radio, and fair enough, if people want to push their point of view in an election campaign, that’s their choice.
On the surface of it, The GetUp group have honourable intentions, to quote from their website “GetUp is an independent, grass-roots community advocacy organisation giving everyday Australians opportunities to get involved and hold politicians accountable on important issues.”
That makes them sound like an impartial group who just want to help people get involved in the democratic process more than once every few years, but when you dig a bit deeper, that picture changes dramatically.
To further quote from their website “GetUp does not back any particular party, but aims to build an accountable and progressive Parliament – a Parliament with economic fairness, social justice and environment at its core.”
To quote their explanation of why we need a group like GetUp, “It has not been a good decade for Australia’s progressives – those of us who share a commitment to the values of social justice, cultural diversity, ecological sustainability and economic fairness.
With its Senate majority, the Coalition Government now has more power than any government in a generation: the other political parties aren’t providing a strong opposition and the media is influenced by a handful of conservative voices.
GetUp.org.au is providing Australians with the tools to fight back”
I think you’ve heard enough to get my drift, GetUp are not in the least bit impartial, they are an anti-conservative movement. They claim to not back any particular party, but their recent commercials paint a very different picture, they are backing Labor, the Democrats and the Greens under the guise of “balance”.
But are GetUp really interested in balance? If the Greens had a majority in the senate, would GetUp be advocating that people vote for the Democrats, Labor and the Liberals? Let’s turn to GetUp’s campaigns for an answer?
GetUp want John Howard to announce a new plan (in other words, a plan they send to him) for Iraq, GetUp have called WorkChoices “un-Australian”, GetUp want John Howard to say “sorry” to the Aborigines, and amongst other things disagree with the Liberal party stance on climate change, the Tasmanian pulp mill and the Northern Territory intervention.
So, if the Greens had complete control of the senate, it’s safe to say that GetUp would not advocate that anyone vote for the Liberal party in an effort to restore balance, because quite simply, GetUp do not believe in balance, they believe in so-called “progressive policy”…in other words, anything which isn’t conservative.
But it’s not just this masquerade of impartiality that bothers me, it’s the fact that they are trying to paint balance as perfection, and the current majority coalition senate as a travesty.
GetUp have obviously forgotten that the reason the coalition have a majority, is because the majority of people voted for them. They also forget that balance, which by definition would be an equal number of people from each party, is not only undemocratic unless it is voted for, but is an awful deadlock.
If, to pick a number out of the air, you had five representatives from Labor, the Liberals, the Democrats, the Greens, Family First, the Citizen’s Electoral Council, etc, it would be almost impossible to pass any legislation because each party would have a gripe with something another party would be in support of.
I doubt we will see another majority senate for a while, but I can only worry about who may hold the balance of power, because in many ways, having a minority extremist group like the Greens holding the balance of power would be worse than a majority. A majority actually requires a majority of people to vote for the group in question, whereas a balance of power requires a minority, in many cases less than twenty or even fifteen per cent of people to vote for the group in question, and despite this small minority of votes, the group would be more-or-less in control of the senate.
I picked the Greens as an example of a minority extremist group a short time ago for a reason. The Greens have always been a far-left-wing group, and by definition are an extremist group. They also, like most extremist groups, only ever manage a relatively small number of votes. Whilst there is certainly nothing wrong with voting for them if you agree with them, the fact that they only ever receive a small percentage of votes, puts them in a perfect position to receive the balance of power.
“And why would that be bad?” I hear you ask…perhaps I’ll let Greens leader Bob Brown explain that with his answers to a couple questions Rove McManus asked him on Channel Ten last night. Mr. McManus asked him if any trees deserved to be pulped. Mr. Bown answered with a very succint “no”.
Mr. McManus posed a clearly jocular question, are vegans just a bit boring? Mr. Brown’s answer, in a very serious tone, “Vegans are helping save the planet.”
Sometimes I wonder if perhaps we should send the vegans to Africa so that they can witness nature in action. The more sensible amongst them would realise that consumption of meat is perfectly natural, whilst the more silly amongst them would try to educate the lions about the error of their ways, be eaten, and we’d never have to hear from them again.
But I digress, my point is that if, for example, as the polls indicate, Labor win the lower house, the idea of giving an entirely different group the balance of power in the senate is nuts. Surely if you vote for a party in the lower house it is because you believe their ideals and policies, and you would want them to be be able to get those policies through the senate as well.
As it happens, if it were up to me we wouldn’t have a senate. I think a single house of parliament is far more democratic…for example here in the ACT we have a legislative assembly which is currently under majority Labor rule. I disagree with the majority of their decisions, but I accept that the majority of ACT residents voted for them. I reserve the right to whinge about the decisions of the ACT government, but I don’t complain about the fact that there is a Labor majority, and I don’t wish that we had an upper house complicating things.
It is my view that federal parliament should be the same. Perhaps then people wouldn’t vote one way in the House of Representatives, and then vote for people they disagree with in the senate, simply to maintain a balance, when in reality you should vote the same way in both houses because you are putting a group in power who you generally agree with.
People got it right in the last election by voting for the same people in both houses. I can only hope that this ridiculous call for an effective deadlock via balance by GetUp doesn’t make people vote differently in each house this time.
By all means vote for whoever you like, but be sensible and vote for them in both houses.
This has been Editorial Echoes for November 19, 2007, if you have any thoughts or comments about any of this, email them to echoes@samuelgordonstewart.com
I would briefly like to thank Cloud Nine for sending me a bunch of quotes about the sham of man-made global warming, and remind you that the weekly poll on my blog this week is an election poll to see who you will be voting for in the house of representatives. If you’d like to cast your vote, samuelgordonstewart.com is the place to go.
I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart, enjoy your day, and until tomorrow, tada.
2 comments November 19th, 2007 at 06:29am
Good morning again John,
I finally remembered the other thing I wanted to mention to you earlier (not that it would have been fair to make my call any longer).
As I'm sure you're aware, race caller Bryan Martin retired on Saturday. Well, before he retired, 3AW's breakfast hosts Ross Stevenson and John Burns had a very good, lengthy interview with him, and they have put a video of the interview on the MyTalk website at http://www.mytalk.com.au/Stations/Talk/3AW/Pages/3AWbreakfastPAGE.aspx
If you get some time during the week to watch it, I think you'll enjoy the interview.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
November 19th, 2007 at 03:22am
This week I am giving the award to The Turtles, and, whilst this song has been performed by many artists, I particularly like the version by The Turtles, and therefore the feature song this week is “So Happy Together”.
I also spotted this animation of it a few weeks ago and found it to be quite amusing.
Imagine me and you, I do
I think about you day and night, it’s only right
To think about the girl you love and hold her tight
So happy togetherIf I should call you up, invest a dime
And you say you belong to me and ease my mind
Imagine how the world could be, so very fine
So happy togetherI can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you
For all my life
When you’re with me, baby the skies’ll be blue
For all my lifeMe and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy togetherI can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you
For all my life
When you’re with me, baby the skies’ll be blue
For all my lifeMe and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy togetherBa-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-baMe and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it had to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy togetherSo happy together
How is the weather
So happy together
We’re happy together
So happy together
Happy together
So happy together
So happy together
1 comment November 18th, 2007 at 11:59pm
Climate change hasn’t been a huge issue so far in the election campaign, but a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will bring the issue to the fore. Samuel examines the issues to see if the consensus of scientists predicting climate-change-induced-disaster really exists, and what effect climate change will have on the election.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/EditorialEchoes/011.mp3]
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You are more than welcome to respond to anything you hear on the show by sending an email to echoes@samuelgordonstewart.com. Emails may be read and responded to on a future episode.
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The script follows.
Samuel
It looks like somehow I managed to get the date wrong in the script of this episode and didn’t notice.
Welcome to Editorial Echoes for November 15, 2007, I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart.
Nine days between episodes…well that’s something that’s going to change. We’re now in the final week of the election campaign, and from now until the day after the election, there will be an episode of Editorial Echoes every morning.
Later this week we’ll catch up with a journalist who has been following the leaders around throughout the election campaign, and during the week I will be out and about conducting polling, with results on election day.
Incidentally, I’m also running an election poll on my blog at samuelgordonstewart.com and I’d be very interested to see you cast your vote in the poll. The more votes cast, the better!
Anyway, on with the show, and today I’d like to have a word with you about climate change. Climate change is something we have heard an awful lot about in recent times, but it hasn’t really been a huge issue so far in the campaign. In fact, the “who copied who” of climate change policies appeared to take up more time than the actual policies.
Climate change really hasn’t had anywhere near as much focus during this campaign as many would have expected, but that will probably change this week as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, have released a report which, once again, paints an alarming picture of the climate change issue.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has been quoted as saying “Today the world’s scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice”, but Mr. Moon, have they?
DemandDebate.com sent out a survey to 345 members of the IPCC and found something quite astounding. Less than 50% of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1-degree Celsius is undesirable. Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others or too difficult to assess.
Only 14% said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Whilst Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate, and even more incredibly, only 20% said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change.
The survey found that the standard questions about humans and climate change tended to get responses which you would expect from an IPCC report, but once they started asking questions which didn’t quite seem to fit the usual script, the views varied wildly, and the cosensus disappeared.
And even scientists are questioning the consensus, the Petition Project for example has recorded signatures from 19,000 scientists questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism, and other IPCC scientists have resigned due to their disagreements with other members of the panel, and yet still get their name on reports.
So, with this in mind, what does the latest report say?
Well an unpronounceable scientist and economist who heads up the IPCC summarised it by saying the world would have to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to avert major problems.
“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late” he said.
But hang on a minute, during the week the New South Wales government released a report showing that air pollution in Sydney has dropped by 30 per cent in the last fifteen years. The report went in to further detail by naming particular pollutants, including carbon monoxide emissions, which dropped by 34 per cent.
Now if Sydney has managed these reductions despite an increase in population, then it is probably fair to say that other cities have done the same, which means pollution is dropping, but climate change continues, which brings us back to the lesson of history, the lesson that climate change is natural, or at the very least, mostly natural.
When you consider that only forty years ago or so we had scientists warning us of an impending ice age, you have to wonder how much of the alarmism is real science, and how much of it is merely keeping these scientists in a job.
And when I consider that I’ve heard a handful of scientists this year claiming that they are starting to see a shift towards another phase of global cooling, I can only think that we will see a very large number of scientists with a fair amount of egg on their collective faces in the coming years.
Of course the most amusing thing about the IPCC report is that it is the precursor to a round of international climate change talks in Bali next month.
You would think that a group concerned about carbon emissions would want to hold their meetings in a location which would require the least amount of travel, which would surely mean somewhere in Europe, not an island nation almost as far away from the vast majority of nations as you can get…not to mention the amount of air conditioning they will have to use in Indonesia in December!
I suppose the question therefore is, how will the issue of climate change affect the election? Well there was a national protest about global warming last weekend, the so-called “walk against warming”, and it’s probably fair to say that the majority of people who see climate change and the supposed need to take action as the main issue which will decide their vote, would have attended the walk.
Cate Faehrmann from the Nature Conservation Council said estimates suggested as many as 150,000 people attended the rally nationally. 150,000, in a nation of 21 million, 141 thousand people. That’s 0.7 per cent. Naturally, this prompted one of Bob Brown’s amusing pronouncements. He told the Sydney march that the turnout proved the environment is a top priority ahead of the November 24 election.
Well Bob, if 0.7 per cent of the population have climate change as their clinching argument for their vote. That’s only enough to tip the balance in six electorates, half of which are Labor electorates anyway.
The electorates are Hindmarsh, held by Labor by 0.06 per cent
Kingston, held by Liberal by 0.07 per cent
Swan, held by Labor by 0.08 per cent
Macquarie, held by Labor by 0.47 per cent
Bonner, held by Liberal by 0.51 per cent and
Wakefield, held by Liberal by 0.67 per cent.
This 0.7 wasn’t just the climate change fanatics either, the numbers were inflated by other groups tagging along for the ride. For example, the Canberra march was joined by Resistance, the peculiar rent-a-mob socialist movement that seem to turn up to any protest they can find, and a bunch of anti-nuclear movements, which seems strange considering that nuclear power would help to curb carbon emissions.
So, 0.7 per cent, many of whom are so anti-liberal that they would vote against the coalition even if they could cure cancer, produce world peace and end hunger and poverty.
Will climate change have much effect on the outcome of the election? The answer is a very clear “no”.
This has been Editorial Echoes for November 15, 2007, if you have any thoughts or comments about any of this, email them to echoes@samuelgordonstewart.com
In the previous episode of Editorial Echoes I provided my Melbourne Cup tips…well as per usual I had a shocker, with my tips running 14th, 16th and 19th.
As I mentioned earlier, the weekly poll on my blog this week is an election poll to see who you will be voting for in the house of representatives. If you’d like to cast your vote, samuelgordonstewart.com is the place to go.
Last week’s question about compulsory voting saw 71% in favour of it. A result which is hardly surprising.
I’m Samuel Gordon-Stewart, I look forward to talking to you again tomorrow, and until then, tada.
2 comments November 18th, 2007 at 06:44am
You may recall that in May I ran a two party preferred poll to see who people thought they might vote for at the federal election. The results showed a first preference win to the coalition, 49% to 41%, over Labor, with the 10% of people voting “other”.
This time around, with the election just a week away, I’m doing much the same thing, except this time the poll names the four major parties. The results will be announced on election day.
(Results)
I was going to name the parties in double-randomised order, much like the Australian Electoral Commission do with candidates on ballot papers, however I decided to go with alphabetical order as there is too much room for accusations of bias if I list certain parties ahead of others.
If you would like to explain your decision to vote for your chosen party or “other”, then I would be most interested in hearing your point of view in the comments.
It will also be interesting to see how close the results of this poll are to the make-up of the next House of Representatives.
Last week’s poll result was fairly expectable.
Total Votes: 41
Started: November 12, 2007
Over two thirds of people agree with compulsory voting…I suppose the remaining 29% can lodge their protest on November 24 by lodging informal votes (not that I condone such behaviour).
Samuel
November 17th, 2007 at 05:14pm
Legendary Australian horse race caller Bryan Martin is retiring. Tomorrow’s meeting at Sandown will be the final race meeting he will call in a career which has spanned 36 years.
Bryan Martin has been a prominent voice in the racing industry, and in many cases has been the voice of the racing industry, and will arguably be most remembered for his call of the 2006 Cox Plate where he called Fields Of Omagh, a horse he part owns, to victory.
I don’t know an awful lot about Bryan Martin, except for the fact that just about every time I have taken any notice of horse racing, his voice has been there. For me at least, Bryan Martin is synonymous with horse racing. However, as I don’t know much about him, I will defer to the good people at racingandsports.com.au and their article on Mr. Martin’s retirement.
Bryan’s close call to the end…
Wednesday, 14 November 2007: Australia’s number one race caller Bryan Martin will hang up the binoculars this Saturday 17th November at Sandown, after a stellar 36 years in broadcasting. Loved by both television viewers and radio listeners alike, Martin is best known for calling his own horse, Fields of Omagh, to win two Cox Plates.
Beginning his unofficial career by calling plastic horses on string on the family kitchen table, Martin quickly developed a love for the sport of racing and a passion for broadcasting – “I started my career as the mail boy at 3AW in 1966, anything to be involved in the profession!”. From there he moved to 5DN in Adelaide, back to Melbourne at 3UZ, 3DB, Sport 927 and finally switching mediums to head up the charge at Racing’s own station – TVN.
Taking Australian Racing to an International level, Martin has called in many countries around the world including Dubai, Hong Kong, New Guinea, Canada New Zealand and every state of Australia. But his most memorable international call was of the 1990 Japan Cup, where he was broadcast to every English speaking nation in the world, only to call Australian favourite Better Loosen Up across the line “Before a crowd of 187,000 fans, it was like calling at the Olympic Games of Racing”.
His thrill at calling horses he loved was taken to a new level, when in 2003 he called his horse Fields of Omagh to win the W.S Cox Plate, for television, radio and on course. His dream was to be repeated in the 2006 Cox Plate, when Bryan called FOO in the horse’s last race before retirement “I knew deep down he could do it, and though it was close to call, I just knew in my heart he had got there”. While the champagne flowed, so did the accolades for a most professional race call against the toughest of odds.
Recognised by not only the public as brilliant in his field, Martin was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for Services to the Horse Racing Industry, twice awarded the “Bert Wolfe” Award for Media Excellence, and has been an Australia Day Ambassador for five years in a row. Most recently, Martin was awarded the Kingston Town Award by Moonee Valley Race Club for Services to the Cox Plate.
While ever present in the racing media, Martin has worked behind the scenes with his passion for the sport driving him to set up many racing programmes. He was a critical part of establishing the Australian Racing Hall of Fame which he has chaired for the last five years, Champions – the Racing Museum, and Living Legends – a rest home for retired Australian and International racehorses, and home of Fields of Omagh. When Bryan calls Correct Weight for the last time this Saturday at Sandown, it will be with a twinkle in his eye “Maybe I’ll join Fields of Omagh and the other retired racing champions at Living Legends!”
For the record, Bryan is photographed with his wife Jill in the second photo.
Samuel
1 comment November 16th, 2007 at 03:31pm
Tomorrow is a very special day for 2UE’s John Kerr. The 17th of November marks the day that he started broadcasting fifty years ago.
The even better news is that John will be on air to celebrate from midnight to 6am.
John was interviewed by John Laws this morning. Unfortunately I missed the interview but I wouldn’t be surprised if it appears on the 2UE website shortly or if John replays it on his show tomorrow morning.
Update: Courtesy of Radioinfo, here is the audio of John Laws interviewing John Kerr.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/JohnKerr50YearsOfBroadcasting-JohnLaws.mp3]
Download link
End Update
I’ll hold off on congratulating John until he is on-air…he will be receiving a call from me.
Samuel
1 comment November 16th, 2007 at 12:44pm
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